Gamescape: A Look at Development in North America's Cities

MIT has always been an engine of new ideas and talent for
the Boston game development
community. In recent years, two researchers from MIT's Media Lab, Alex
Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, brought about a radical shift in the game industry
with the creation of Guitar Hero.

When they formed Harmonix Music Systems in 1995, their goal
was to bring the interactive music making research that they had been doing at
the university to a wider audience.

After creating Frequency and Amplitude as well as several titles in Konami's Karaoke Revolution line of music games, Harmonix teamed up with
RedOctane to produce the guitar peripheral-based Guitar Hero.

Since its release in 2005, Guitar Hero has become a cultural force, forever changing the
audience for video games.

Leaving the Guitar
Hero franchise in the hands of Activision, Harmonix has since moved on to
create the Rock Band franchise,
further expanding on its mission of bringing the joy of music creation to
non-musicians.

Dirty Water

In 1997 a group of Looking Glass developers including Ken
Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier split off to form their own studio
called Irrational Games. Irrational's first effort was a co-production with
Looking Glass on a System Shock sequel.
Released in 1999, System Shock 2 revisited
the deep space horror of the original game with improved graphics courtesy of a
new engine based on the work done for Thief.

Over the next several years Irrational would open a studio
in Canberra, Australia, create Freedom
Force and its sequel, a new Tribes game,
as well as a new entry in the long-running SWAT
series. In 2004 Irrational revealed plans for a new game called BioShock that would be a return to the
themes and style of the great Looking Glass games of its roots.

By 2006 Irrational had joined Take-Two Interactive and its
studios were renamed 2K Boston and
2K Australia.
With the release of BioShock in 2007,
the studio made good on its promise and delivered a game that was as
intelligent and mature as it was visually striking. BioShock's overwhelming critical and commercial success was telling
affirmation of the design principles first described by Looking Glass a decade
earlier.

The Sprawl

In years past the Boston
area was home to Infocom, the creators of Zork
and numerous other classic text adventures, and later Papyrus Design Group of NASCAR Racing fame. Currently the city
hosts a new generation of studios that cover the gamut of the industry. Blue
Fang Games, creators of the Zoo Tycoon
series, Turbine, the developers behind The
Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, and Tilted Mill Entertainment,
designers of the city building games Children
of the Nile and SimCity Societies
have all established studios in the region.

Baseball legend Curt Schilling's
newly-formed 38 Studios, which is working on a MMO with design contributions
from R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, is also located in the Greater Boston
area.

Rockstar New England is based just north of Boston
in Andover. Formerly known as Mad
Doc Software, the studio picked up development on Jane's Attack Squadron after Looking Glass was forced to shelve the
project. Since then it has worked on Dungeon
Siege: Legends of Aranna, Empire Earth II, Star Trek: Legacy, and Bully: Scholarship Edition.

Contract work is an important part of the game industry and Boston
area's Demiurge Studios is making a name for itself as Unreal Engine experts
after work on BioShock, Mass Effect,
and the Brothers in Arms series. Also
near Boston is Orbus Gameworks, a
company that produces metrics gathering middleware as well as metrics consulting

In addition to MIT there are a number of higher education
resources in the Boston region that
provide game development related programs. The Berklee College of Music and Northeastern
University are both located within
the city while the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston
University is in nearby Waltham
and Worchester is home to the Polytechnic Institute.

Boston occupies
a unique space in the history of game development. Talent has always been drawn
to the city, lured there by educational and entrepreneurial opportunities. And
wherever smart people gather to do interesting things, someone will surely make
a game of it.